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Enlarge ImageRequest to buy this photoCOURTNEY HERGESHEIMER | DISPATCHMorgan Conley, 19, started her Black Friday buying at Walmart on Thanksgiving Day last year. The success of extended shopping hours means the trend will continue.

CLEVELAND — The extra-long 2012 holiday shopping season will end up extending the hours retail employees work this year and beyond.

That’s because stores not only kept their doors open longer than ever before, they also drew more customers and raked in more sales than in 2011.

ShopperTrak, the Chicago technology company that measures retail foot traffic, said shoppers spent$248.8 billion during the last two months of 2012.

In other words, consumers can expect to see even more stores kick off their Black Friday sales next Thanksgiving — as well as more stores staying open 24/7 on major shopping holidays.

Yet all those extra hours won’t translate into extra pay for the thousands of retail workers who staff those stores, labor and employment lawyers say.

That’s because most retail workers — who generally make slightly more than minimum wage — don’t work enough hours to qualify for overtime or holiday pay even if they work those overnight or weekend shifts, said Anthony Lazzaro, a Cleveland lawyer and owner of Lazzaro Law Firm.

Even though some employers do pay workers extra for working on a holiday, “employees are only entitled to overtime if they actually work over 40 hours in a given workweek.”

For temporary or part-time workers, “the problem is that they have no leverage,” Lazzaro said. “They think, ‘If I work on Christmas Day, maybe I’ll get that permanent job offer.’ And if they say that they don’t want to work on those holidays, they can be legally terminated.”

For the retailers, “the cost to bring them on is minimum wage,” he said. “It’s so cheap to hire them, why not be open 24/7 and compete with Amazon?”

More and more retail workers are “being asked to make a pretty big sacrifice and work on days you’re supposed to be with your family,” said Jason Bristol, a lawyer with Cohen Rosenthal & Kramer in Cleveland. “The question is: Where is it going to stop?”